White Girl Meets Hip Hop

I went to see a friend of a friend's hip hop group last night. When they started to perform, I couldn't help but giggle that they were white boys from Ballard. But why is that funny? I'm uncomfortable. I feel sorry for them pretending to be something they aren't. They don't fit the urban, oppressed, black hip hop

mold. So their life experience and form of creative expression isn't valid?! But they're good. They are talented, passionate, and look like they are having

a whole lot of fun. Suddenly, I'm jealous because I don't have the guts to break out of my own mold.

I love real hip hop. The rhythm. The energy. The poetry of social justice. (I even love a lot of the crappy grind-up-on-that-... stuff. Don't judge.) But I enjoy it from afar because I feel I don't belong. I'm a white woman from a straight-laced middle class family in North Seattle. Getting dressed for my first exclusively hip hop show (Blue Scholars!) a few weeks ago was stressful. Could I be myself yet still fit in? (I decided a tight fitting hoodie and big hoop earings were the key, btw.) Luckily, it turns out hip hop in Seattle is very diverse. No one cares what you look like - they're too busy enjoying the music. As I should be.

On a continuing quest to chip away at my discomfort with the mystery of racial and cultural difference, I'm reading Black White and Jewish by Rebecca Walker and expecting to learn about a life experience very different from my own. I have; my dad never kept a shotgun by the door in case the Klan came around. But I also read about myself. "Because keeping a part of myself held back is what I've done to cope... opting instead to be partially known, reservedly intimate, I have no idea if I can tolerate what might be a less than accepting response." We have both struggled to untangle pieces of imposed identity while being suspended in the fear of judgement. If we could listen to each other, would we find out that human experience and emotion are universal?

We walk on eggshells when discussing things like race. It's so easy to emotionally trigger someone else without getting the chance to honestly explore what we meant and how it was received. Being familiar with fallout from emotional land mines, my self-preservation instincts tell me to steer clear. But I am no longer comfortable making assumptions about things I have not experienced and don't understand.

I have struggled with identity, perhaps more than many people because of some difficult life circumstances. But I have not struggled with or been made to feel inferior because of my racial identity. I have the luxury of belonging to the comfortable majority. I have recently come to accept that through no fault of my own, I have been led to participate in and benefit from a system of advantage based on race simply by being white in the United States. But now I know. I would be at fault if I continued carelessly from here. So I lean into the fear and try to ask more questions...